


Voices in the Night

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Campaign 02 (Critical Role), Gen, Mention of food insecurity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 18:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13441059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: Molly finds his voice in an unexpected place.





	Voices in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Because you can't just say that Molly didn't talk when he first joined the carnival without me having to write SOMETHING about it.

No one at the Fletching and Moondrop Traveling Carnival of Curiousities questioned the fact that Mollymauk didn’t speak. Carnivals traditionally attracted those on the fringes of society, people with baggage or scars, people who didn’t ask questions because they didn’t want questions in turn. It was Yasha who provided words when Molly needed them, Yasha who, after demonstrating her strength to Gustav had motioned Molly forward.

“You have us both or not at all,” Yasha had said in her rumble of a voice.

Gustav had frowned. “He has to work if he wants to eat, this isn’t a charity. Does he have any skills?”

“He _can_ hear you,” Yasha had replied, folding her arms.

“My apologies,” Gustav had said, turning to Molly. “Show me what you can do, please.”

Molly had nodded and drawn his swords. There were things he could do with those swords, wonderful, terrible things, but he had juggled them instead, walking in a circle around the ringmaster, his steps never faltering as the blades flashed and glittered in the sun. After that he had performed some slight of hand, and that was that. He hadn’t reached for the cards he kept in the pocket of his robes, the robes he had made himself out of scavenged silk and embroidered over months on the road. The cards were for when he had words again.

Molly had been full of words once, rushing torrents of words that he had used to talk himself out of trouble time and time again. But some problems couldn’t be solved with words, only blades and blood, and on the morning Molly had woken to find his river of words had dried up, he hadn’t even been surprised.

He had a feeling Yasha understood. Yasha who had few words herself, who moved in and out of his life like the tide, sometimes going off by herself for days at a time. She always found him again, wherever he went, and that was both a mystery and a comfort he refused to take for granted. She was sleeping now, in the tent they shared, and Molly knew that the others assumed certain things about the two of them. Just because he didn’t speak didn’t mean he didn’t listen, and his hearing was very good. The rumors didn’t bother him, and they just amused Yasha, so that was was all right.

Molly moved through the darkness between the tents, no destination in mind. He often couldn’t sleep for nightmares, and his restless roaming was well known to the other people at the carnival. Occasionally it was even useful, like the night the bandits attacked, or the time that a pack of wolves had come down from the mountains, rabid and unafraid. Molly had made short work of both those threats, of course. He had fought worse things.

Molly hadn’t been with the carnival long, but he already knew the rhythm of the night noises, the faint breathing, the muffled moans as people enjoyed a little nighttime fun, the snores of the creature they had dubbed the “devil-toad.” When a different sound came to his ears it clashed against the established song like a gong, even though the sound was soft. Someone crying.

Molly froze, head cocked, hands hovering over the hilts of his swords for a brief instant before falling away. There were a few occasions where tears could be solved with blades, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t one. He walked quietly and swiftly toward the source of the sound, and when he rounded the corner of the tent where the “devil toad” slept he saw Toya, the little dwarven girl, sitting by the tent flap, looking up at the sky and weeping softly.

Molly scuffed one boot against the ground loudly enough that Toya looked over and noticed Molly standing there, which was what he had intended. When she didn’t motion for him to go away or scuttle back into the tent, Molly took a step closer, still giving her plenty of time to react to his presence. She only sniffled and wiped at her tears with one small hand.

Molly would have known Toya had spent some time on the streets even if he hadn’t heard as much from the conversations of those around him. You could tell a lot about a person from the way they ate, and at mealtimes Toya ate like she wasn’t expecting there to be food the next day, and Molly had often seen her slipping bits of food into her pockets, no doubt to stash away, just in case. He remembered that from his own childhood, and it had made his heart ache a little to see her doing it.

Toya was a bit of a contradiction, speaking only when spoken to, and only with one word answers, which was more than Molly did, but oh could she sing. Even Yasha had wept the first time she had heard Toya sing, though Molly had pretended not to notice, and trusted Yasha had done the same for him as tears had run down his own cheeks. Toya deserved better than performing in a carnival, but it was miles better than living on the streets and singing for what coin people would give you. Molly wondered idly what a bardic college would make of her but that was a thought for later.

Molly took another step toward the girl, and another, until he was close enough to kneel down in front of her. He pointed at her, mimed a tear running down his face, then tilted his head in a questioning way.

“I—“ Toya’s voice was a broken crackle of a thing, putting Molly in mind of shards of a vase on a stone floor. There was a long pause as Toya twisted her golden braids in her hands, and for a moment Molly didn’t think she was going to continue.

“I miss my family,” Toya continued, the first long sentence Molly had ever heard the girl speak. “Momma used to sing to me when I had bad dreams, and Poppa told me stories.” More tears flowed down the girl’s cheeks, and she wiped at them with her braids.

Molly wouldn’t have asked what had happened to Toya’s parents even if he had had the words for it. There was no sense in poking at wounds, be they old or new. Instead he pretended to pull a bluebell from behind the girl’s ear, presenting it to her with a flourish. The trick surprised a giggle out of her, and Molly smiled, glad that he always kept the hidden pockets of his robe full of small things. Next he produced a boiled sweet from seemingly thin air and held it out to her.

Toya stuffed the candy into her mouth like it might vanish as mysteriously as it had appeared. “Thank you, Molly—Mollyma—“

Molly wasn’t sure if the trouble with his name was due to the candy or the fact that well, it could be a mouthful of a name for someone so young. “Mollymauk,” he said, and if her voice was broken pottery then his was a shattered blade, the syllables cutting him as they emerged from his throat. “Molly to my friends, so you can call me Molly.” Now that the words had started flowing, like blood or like water, they didn’t seem to want to stop. “A mollymauk is a type of bird that flies over the ocean. There’s a song about them, would you like to hear it?”

Toya smiled and clasped her hands together, the bluebell Molly had given her tucked between them. “Yes please!”

Molly had the presence of mind to sing softly so as not to wake anyone, and if the quality of his singing voice offended Toya she gave no sign of it.

“I feel better,” Toya declared at the end of his song, blinking sleepily. “Thank you, Molly. Did your momma sing to you when you had bad dreams too?”

“Yes,” Molly lied easily. “Yes she did, and I always went right to sleep afterwards and you should too.”

Molly waited until Toya went back into her tent before walking back to his own tent and pulling out his deck of fortune telling cards. He shuffled them for a very long time before laying them out in a complicated pattern, studying the layout intently.

In the morning Gustav was surprised to see Mollymauk striding toward him, a smile on his face and a deck of cards in his hand.

“Good morning Gustav,” Molly said with a bow, his voice no longer broken, words flowing out of him as easily as blood from a wound. “I think it’s time I show you what else I can do.”


End file.
